


weird divide

by moondown



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alcohol, M/M, Pre-Time Skip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:47:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22547275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moondown/pseuds/moondown
Summary: Sylvain comes to a stop in front of them and bows showily, his fuzzy reflection in the floor growing around his shined shoes. He uses the opportunity to give Felix a once-over. When he straightens, he grins, laying his compliment on thickly: “You look positively surly.”Felix almost smirks. A better start than anticipated.——Set during the Garreg Mach Ball.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 4
Kudos: 116





	weird divide

**Author's Note:**

> Everyone else has written a fic set during the Garreg Mach Ball, and now it's my turn. The title is also a song by The Shins. This is my first contribution to this fandom; thank you for reading, in advance.

“Felix,” someone calls.

Felix finds Sylvain as he’s excusing himself from the girl he’d been dancing with, and her dejected gaze follows him all the way to the hall’s entrance. Felix has just arrived an hour late, unintentionally, having planned to avoid the dance altogether until Annette and Ingrid bodied their way into his room and dragged him here. Now they wait on either side of him, Annette cuffing his arm in both hands, both assuming — correctly — he’ll escape if left unattended.

Sylvain comes to a stop in front of them and bows showily, his fuzzy reflection in the floor growing around his shined shoes. He uses the opportunity to give Felix a once-over. When he straightens, he grins, laying his compliment on thickly: “You look positively surly.”

“Sylvain,” Ingrid chastises.

Felix almost smirks. A better start than anticipated. “Thanks.”

“And you showed up with two dates,” Sylvain continues approvingly. Felix scowls. Sylvain ignores this, teasing, “The student becomes the master.”

“I’m leaving.”

It takes Ingrid and Annette almost a minute to wrestle Felix back into the ballroom. But then Ingrid lets go of him to punch Sylvain hard in the arm, and Sylvain yelps and cradles the sore spot through his sleeve, which makes Felix feel faintly less homicidal.

“Do you want to dance, Felix?” Annette asks hastily.

Felix opens his mouth to say “No,” and says “Fine,” instead. As they move toward the dance floor, Sylvain still has the audacity to give Felix a thumbs-up. Felix gives him the finger.

Felix and Annette dance, their footwork becoming surer as the music swells around them. Felix leads her well, his hand at her waist, and even manages a half-smile as they turn and her skirt flags like a raven wing. Her giddy laugh is infectious.

“I’m surprised by how good you are at this,” she says, then backtracks. “I mean — not that I didn’t expect you to be good, it’s just — it doesn’t really seem like something you’d be interested in.”

“It’s fine,” Felix says. “I was trained as a child. Most nobles are.”

“Right,” she breathes. Her laugh is sheepish; she missteps and Felix corrects them. “Of — oops. Of course.”

In order to learn, Felix had to think of dancing as a sort of swordplay, both requiring precise footwork. Glenn taught him that comparison. His stern direction cuts through the orchestra, so as the song draws to a close, Felix slowly grows rigid again; he takes his hand from Annette’s hand and from her waist. They look at, then away from, each other awkwardly.

Felix finally offers respite: “Punch?”

——

After Felix makes it to the punch bowl, he refuses to leave, even when Annette flits to Mercedes and a couple of other girls ask him to dance. As he ladles himself another cup, Hilda teeters next to him. 

“Look at all these snacks,” she gushes. The table is covered: petit fours, madeleines, truffles, meringue. She plucks a chocolate from a plate and turns it under the light as if appraising a gem. “I have just the thing to go with this.”

“Is there a reason you’re narrating yourself,” Felix drawls. He turns, leaning the small of his back against the dressed table, and broodily sips his punch.

“Nope,” Hilda giggles. She leans in, and says earnestly, “I just love to hear myself talk.”

Felix smells the sharp-sweet tang of wine. His brow twitches. Stupidly, he looks into his punch, his reflection frowning at him in question.

Hilda reads his expression and laughs. “I brought my own, silly. See?” She slides a small flask halfway out of her dress pocket. Silver, it glints like a dagger. “Do you want some?”

Felix opens his mouth to say “No,” and says “Fine,” instead.

——

Felix isn’t drunk from one glass of wine, but he also isn’t sober, which is a modest improvement of his night. He’s since migrated from the punch bowl to stand beside the wall, and he rests the back of his head against it, bun askew, as Sylvain slides into the spot beside him. He smells strongly of perfume — not one specifically, but a mixture of florae and spice — and, more faintly, like sweat. Something distinctly him.

“Don’t tell me you’re bored,” Felix says.

“Not at all,” Sylvain laughs, winded. He sags against the wall. “Just needed a break.”

Felix _hmph_ s. “You wouldn’t, if you trained more.”

“Says the person who’s danced, what? One time tonight?”

A silence drapes them like a fresh sheet: comfortable, airy. Felix crosses an arm over his stomach, fingers curled over his bent elbow, and finishes the last of his wine. He catches Sylvain studying him in his peripherals. He lowers his glass, eyes narrowed.

“What,” he says.

Sylvain’s smile seems to ripple, moving from one side of his mouth to the other. “You’re flushed,” he says, and Felix scoffs, turning his face. “Seriously!” Sylvain laughs again. “You feeling okay?”

Sylvain raises a hand as if he means to press the back of it to Felix’s cheek or forehead, but he thinks better of it, and therefore gets to keep his hand. It hovers between them, its shadow thatching Felix’s shoulder.

Felix sighs and tilts his glass. If he were a beggar, meager coins would clink in the bottom; but what’s left of his drink merely pools into a crescent shape on one side.

He leans in, the way he did when they shared secrets as children, and Sylvain’s hand falls unobtrusively to his shoulder as if prepared to brace him.

“It’s wine,” Felix murmurs.

Sylvain’s eyes widen and shine. He jostles him proudly, so Felix wrenches himself out from under his palm.

“You’re all kinds of surprising tonight,” Sylvain says.

“And you’re predictable,” Felix clips.

Predictable, indeed. A girl approaches them shyly, wringing her hands in front of her stomach. Her eyes flutter like butterflies from Sylvain’s face, to the floor, to Felix’s glass, then to Sylvain’s face again; she finds him beaming the second time. He says a line and then whisks her away, easy, winking at Felix over his shoulder.

——

While Sylvain dances through another round of girls, Felix attempts three unsuccessful escapes.

The first is thwarted by Ashe, unintentionally; he calls for Felix as he inches by, which Felix would have ignored, had Annette not called for him just afterward. Because of her, he stalks toward them with a scowl and pinched brow, half-listens to a tactical problem, and, after letting both explain their different and complicated maneuvers around enemy lines, flatly says, “Just cut through.”

His second escape attempt is impeded by Mercedes, intentionally. She loops her arm through his and practically carries him back inside, her voice sweet but laced with warning. “You wouldn’t want to miss out on all the fun, would you?”

The third attempt is almost successful, prevented only by an unrelated fight Caspar decides to pick with another student. A crowd gathers to break it up, swallowing Felix in the masses, which is another way of saying this escape is prevented by bad luck — or worse, fate.

To fate, Felix yields. He crosses his arms and sourly watches the boar swing around the professor.

——

It gets around that Hilda has wine. Felix blames Sylvain without hesitancy or guilt, but Hilda blames Felix so she cuts him off. Felix opens his mouth to say “Fine,” and says “No,” instead.

“Yes,” Hilda snoots.

She swirls into a dance with Lorenz. Even tipsy, Hilda’s footwork is lovely, and her pigtails metronome back and forth in time with the music. Over hers and Lorenz’s heads, the clock’s big hand ticks to eleven. And beside them, Sylvain dips Ingrid so low that the end of her braid brushes the shining floor; then he pretends to drop her.

Felix huffs through his nose, amused, cutting his gaze sideways as Ingrid swats Sylvain’s chest. She straightens and extracts herself, chastising him as she swipes her hands down her dress. Felix distantly hears Sylvain’s unapologetic, _Sorry_.

“Perhaps you could ask Ingrid to dance?” Dimitri suggests, coming to stand beside Felix. “You’re certainly a more…serious partner than Sylvain.”

“I thought we agreed this dance was a waste of time,” Felix says.

A headache is blooming in his temple as the wine seeps away from him. Both that and Dimitri’s relentless hypocrisy make Felix irritable, like a spider with a frayed web.

“I’m stepping outside,” Dimitri offers, altruistic as ever, “if you’d like to join me.”

“No, thanks.”

Felix watches the couples switch partners; feels Dimitri leave his side. Ingrid, now with Lorenz, appears unpracticed and rigid, stumbling as she tries to fall into step with his fluid movements. Meanwhile, Sylvain fixes Hilda with a beseeching look. Felix knows it well — this look means Sylvain has a request — but even by watching his mouth closely, Felix can’t tell what.

——

“I’m surprised you’re still here,” Sylvain says.

He’s found Felix in the corner of the hall, seated alone at a table with his hand around a cup of water, which he’s been drumming his finger against. He trails his gaze to Sylvain’s face slowly, what’s left of his energy sapped. He shrugs one shoulder.

“Like you said,” he drawls. “I’m full of surprises.”

“Well, get up.” Sylvain cocks his chin. “‘Cause I’ve got a surprise for you.”

Felix narrows his eyes. He curves his finger over the rim of his glass, feeling its cool edge against the first joint, and otherwise stays utterly still.

Sylvain tries again, smile rocking from side-to-side, “Come with me.”

Felix glimpses the ballroom suspiciously, but Ingrid and Annette are no longer watching; instead, they sit with their shoes off, giggling with Mercedes. Dimitri and now the professor are gone. Near the punch bowl, Ashe and Dedue taste-test leftover hors d'oeuvres. Nothing is stopping Felix from leaving.

He scoffs, but scrapes his chair legs across the floor, rising to follow Sylvain.

——

The first surprise: wine. Sylvain takes Felix to the gazebo, the two settling onto a blue-licked bench, and he produces Hilda’s flask from his pant pocket. Felix actually laughs, the sound breathless; hissed through his teeth.

“Despite someone telling her it was my fault everyone knew about it,” Sylvain accuses as he twists off the cap, “I still managed to convince her to give me the rest.”

And the second:

Huddled against the cold wind and prying eyes, knees and shoulders bumping, they pass the flask back and forth, murmuring to each other with mouths stained purple and sweet, the night oozing over them like tree sap. That slow amber. It stretches their breath and gazes, lures them into a soft silence, one natural and brittle and shimmering, like a dragonfly’s wing. Like the kiss they gift each other.

Felix inhales as they part, barely. He keeps closed his eyes.

Sylvain touches his flushed face, and Felix is surprised, too, by this tenderness.


End file.
